


We can sort of harmonize together

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 12:43:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13975407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: For a girl who is officially one half of the most decorated pair of ice skaters in Olympic history, Tessa is feeling an awful lot like garbage by the time they land in London, Ontario.





	We can sort of harmonize together

**Author's Note:**

> There should be WAY more porn about these guys than there is, so here we are trashing up the place. Follow-up to [Every Inch of You And Then Some](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802187). Title is the Arkells, Kiss Cam.

For a girl who is officially one half of the most decorated pair of ice skaters in Olympic history, Tessa is feeling an awful lot like garbage by the time they land in London, Ontario. Her hair is a mess. The cold she’s been fighting all week has turned into full-fledged plague. And she’s pretty sure—at least eighty-five percent—that she accidentally had a one night stand with Scott after their medal ceremony five days ago.

Six days ago? Tessa frowns. The time change is throwing her off.

Since he kissed her goodbye in the athletes’ dorm, they’ve been alone exactly once: holding hands in the tunnel before Long Time Running, an NBC camera crew five feet behind them and their last skate on Olympic ice stretching out in front. Tessa wanted to say something, anything, but she was too close to tears and had too many years of media training. Crying on the podium was one thing; crying in Scott’s arms with Gord Downie playing was another.

Then everything was a blur of interviews and packing and the Closing Ceremonies, where Scott held her mittened hand for a few breathless seconds until they were in view of the cameras and Tessa had to gently disengage. On the plane they were sitting with half the women’s hockey team; the layover in Toronto was wall-to-wall press. Tessa doesn’t know what she thought would happen when they finally landed in London, but it wasn’t _this_ —watching Scott gamely hold strangers’ babies in his Team Canada tee and feeling so sick with longing she can’t breathe.

She thought they would talk about it. She figured he would pull her aside after an interview, or they would go grab coffee together in the shitty Athletes’ Village food court, or maybe he would just follow her back to her room one night and that would be that. When he didn’t—when he spent the rest of the week acting so perfectly, goofily, terrifyingly _normal_ —she started to wonder if possibly she’d hallucinated the sex altogether.

Or—and this is the thought that kept her awake from Pyeongchang all the way to Canada, staring out the window at the dark—if maybe it was just his way of saying goodbye.

“I gotta crash, T,” he says finally, when the well-wishers show no signs of abating. Both of their moms are standing right there.

Tessa nods, swallowing down a dumb, irrational wave of panic. They’ve got more interviews to do, a tour to prepare for—they’ll see each other tomorrow, most likely—but still she feels weirdly like they’re about to say goodbye forever here in front of a few dozen strangers and the reporter who announces snow days on the local news station. If she stops to think about it for even a second she’s going to completely lose her mind, so she gives him the world’s fastest hug, waves to the cheering crowd one more time, and climbs into the backseat of the SUV waiting outside the terminal.

Back at the house she lets her mom run her a bath that she immediately falls asleep in, nearly drowning herself, before climbing out on shaky legs, wrapping herself in a grubby bathrobe she’s had since junior high, and crawling into her childhood bed. _Night_ , she texts Scott, adding a heart emoji and then deleting it at the very last second. She passes out before he texts her back.

Next thing she knows it’s four-thirty in the morning and someone’s knocking on the window beside her head.

“ _Tess,_ ” the person calls, and Tessa recognizes Scott in a rush of relief. She climbs over to let him in. There’s a long, terrifying moment while they navigate how to remove the screen without sending him flying him off the roof, and then he tumbles through in a rush of cold night air.

“How did you get _up_ here?” she hisses, flicking on the light as he scrambles to keep his boots off her bedspread. Her heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her ribs.

“Drainpipe,” Scott says. He’s wearing his Team Canada toque and a hoodie, even though it’s well below zero. “Sorry, I, uh. Texted you.”

Tessa picks up her phone and finds a wall of notifications on her lock screen. She scrolls, but every single one of them is from Scott. _I feel weird,_ says one of them near the bottom. _do you feel weird?_ “I was asleep,” she says stupidly.

“Yeah,” Scott says. “I figured that out.” He toes off his boots, lining them up on her register so they won’t drip on the carpet. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Tessa echoes faintly. It’s like she’s dreaming. When she was in high school, she used to imagine this exact scenario, Scott climbing through her bedroom window like something out of _Dawson’s Creek_. It hurts to remember that version of herself. “You okay?”

Scott shakes his head. “Remember after Sochi?” he asks.

Tessa remembers everything about Sochi, up to and including the parts she’d rather forget. “Yes,” she says.

“Well.” Scott takes off his toque and scrubs his hands through his hair. He looks just as tired as he did when they said goodbye at the airport. “I didn’t want to stop talking for four days this time, I guess.”  

“Oh.” Tessa curls her legs up underneath her, cinching her bathrobe a little more tightly. “Okay. No, me either.”

“Yeah.” Scott nods seriously, then takes a deep breath and jams his hands into his pockets. “So listen. You know I love you, right?”

Tessa blinks. “I—yes,” she says again, not entirely sure what he’s getting at. She was sleeping pretty deeply, she thinks. “Of course. I love you, too.”

“No, like.” Scott shakes his head. “Romantically. _In_ love with you.”

Oh. _Oh_. Tessa makes a quiet sound, something between a gasp and a giggle, and immediately claps both hands over her mouth. “Have you _slept?_ ” she blurts before she can stop herself.

“Tess!” Scott laughs a little too, but it sounds nervous and strangled. “I’m being serious, kiddo.”

Tess’s stomach drops. “I know you are,” she says, scrambling up onto her knees and curling a hand around his elbow, suddenly terrified he’ll go back out the way he came. “I know, I’m sorry, I just didn’t—” She takes a breath, collecting herself. She’s fully awake now, that’s for sure. “I’m sorry.”

Scott sighs like she’s being a pain on purpose but he lets her tug him closer, perching on the edge of her mattress. He smells like cotton and cold. “I should have said it to you the other day when we were—” He breaks off, looking embarrassed. “I guess I just figured you already knew.”

Tessa pictures his hands on her in warmups and the way he looked at her during the victory ceremony, and thinks that she probably did know, a little bit. “I wasn’t sure this was what you meant,” she says. She isn’t sure if she means _this_ as in long term commitment, or _this_ as in him in her bedroom at four AM. Her head is spinning.

“This is what I meant,” Scott says firmly, somehow seeming to encompass both options. “I meant _exactly_ —God, Tess.” He gestures around at her bedroom, and Tessa realizes with a shock that he’s pointing to the collage of family photos on her wall. “I don’t want to be friends or date other people or any of that bullshit.” He shrugs. “Like. I wanna _marry_ you, kiddo.”

Tessa starts laughing again, helplessly, then buries her face in her hands. Her cheeks are wet. “Jean-François will kill us,” she gasps.

“Oh, totally,” Scott agrees. Jean-François is their mental performance coach, which really means he’s their counselor. He told them they should use retirement to discover who they were as separate people. “It’s fine, we can name one of our kids after him or something. Consolation prize. He’ll love it.”

 _One of their_ —that makes Tess lose it completely, laughing so hard she’s afraid she’ll wake every last person in the house. Scott pulls her face into his shoulder to muffle her, his hand warm and strong on the back of her neck. “Oh my God, you’re a disaster,” he murmurs. “Seriously, this is the last time I propo—”

“Shut up,” Tessa gasps, digging her fingers into his shoulders. She feels about thirteen years old. “I’m in love with you too.”

Scott’s whole body goes limp, all the adrenaline draining out of him at once like the split second after they nail a final pose. “Oh, thank fuck,” he says, huffing a warm breath into her hair. His damp hands are suddenly on her everywhere, her face and her ribcage, cupping the back of her skull. “Jesus Christ, Tessa, way to keep a guy on the edge of his seat.”

Tessa huffs. “What?” she says, pulling back and shaking her head at him. “You knew. You’ve known since—”

“I mean, when we were kids, sure, obviously,” Scott says, and Tessa cringes a bit, even though she knows it’s ridiculous to be embarrassed about it at this point. “But I honestly didn’t know if—” He breaks off, looking at her intently; for a beat they just stare at each other, both of them breathing hard. “Holy shit,” he says, and his voice is so quiet. “We are going to have the best fucking life.”

That’s when Tessa kisses him.

She climbs up into his lap to do it, fisting both hands in his hair and yanking. It feels like she’s leaching happiness out her pores. Scott kisses back sweetly at first, touching her cheek like the end of _Long Time Running_ , but then she bites his lip and spreads her legs and he gets the message pretty quickly, bucking up into her and groaning. “Holy _shit_ , Tess,” he gasps, breaking away. “What about your mom?”

“What about her?” Tessa asks, rolling her hips. He’s getting hard underneath her and suddenly it feels like she has something to prove, here in her childhood bedroom where she spent so many years wanting what she couldn’t have. She wants to send him back to Idlerton with her name carved into his skin.

“Who are you and what have you done with Tessa?” Scott asks, rocking up into her.

“Shush,” Tessa says. “I want—” She stops. What she _wants_ is his head between her legs or for him to pull her hair like David used to, but neither of those things feel like something she can say to Scott, who once covered her eyes during the sexy parts of Moulin Rouge when they were preteens.

“You can have it, T,” Scott says, as if they’re talking about something unbearably romantic instead of slightly tasteless sex in her mom’s house. “Anything you want.”

Tessa feels like she’s about to laugh again so she buries her face in his neck to cover, curling her fingers in the hem of his hoodie and pulling it up over his head. She takes his undershirt with it, tossing the whole warm bundle down onto the carpet and raking her nails lightly over his chest, flattening her palms over the broad expanse of muscle. At some point in the last couple of years, the entire shape of his body changed.

Scott shivers at the contact like a dog getting petted. “Why are you still wearing this?” he asks, pushing the fleecy robe down off her shoulders. It seems to occur to him all at once that she doesn’t have anything on underneath it, and he makes a shocked, quiet sound. “Jesus Christ,” he says, reaching out to cup her breast with one big hand, squeezing gently. “Is this how you sleep every night?”

“In my ugly bathrobe?” Tessa teases, thumbing the dark trail of hair beneath his navel. She wants to scratch a little harder, but she doesn’t know what he’d do. “No.”

Scott makes a face. “Well, you should,” he says, working the knot in the sash until it gives and she’s all the way naked. “It’s a good look.”

“Thanks,” Tessa says, arching into his hands. His skin is still cold to the touch so she maneuvers them both under her comforter, pulling the blankets up over their heads like a tent. She hopes the dark will make her braver. “Clothes off,” she tells him, plucking at his sweatpants.

“Not yet,” Scott says, pulling her down so they’re chest to chest. She can feel him wheezing on every inhale, the cold that he caught from her flaring up again now that B2ten isn’t around to foist vitamins on them at every turn. “Do you know how many times I almost told you?” he asks quietly, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “I almost told you so many times, Tess.”

Tessa’s eyes sting. She doesn’t trust herself to answer so she grabs at the waistband of his sweatpants again instead, yanking them down until they’re skin to skin. Scott swears and thrusts up, sliding wetly against her stomach. “Condoms, T,” he gasps, and Tessa nods.

“Mm-hmm,” she agrees, making to roll off him so he can get to them, “go for it,” but Scott shakes his head, looking suddenly panicked.

“No,” he says, “I mean, I don’t have—”

Tessa laughs again, she can’t help it. God, they are both such failures at being adults. “Really?” she asks incredulously. “You came over here and climbed in my window without—”

Scott frowns. “I didn’t come here for a _booty_ call,” he says, sounding offended. “Jesus.”

And—huh. Tessa guesses he didn’t. She gazes at him for a moment. She thinks of him not being with anyone for two years. She imagines putting this off for one more second, then raises her eyebrows at him in the dark.

Scott blinks. “Seriously?” he asks, voice cracking a bit. Tessa shrugs into the blankets, raises her eyebrows again. Scott groans so loudly that she reaches up and slaps a hand over his mouth, embarrassed.

“Oh my God,” she huffs, mouth glancing off his jawbone, “how old are you?”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, his voice muffled by her palm. Tessa leaves it there for a second, worried what he’ll do when they actually begin, but then Scott turns his head and sucks her fingers into his mouth and her stomach swoops so violently that she snatches her hand back, stunned.

“Sorry,” he says, like maybe he thinks he grossed her out. Tessa has no idea how to tell him that’s not what happened at all. “Okay, I’m gonna—” He reaches down to line them up, and both of them gasp. Tessa squeezes her eyes shut, weirdly embarrassed. She wonders how many times they’ll have to do this before it stops feeling so enormously strange.

“Fuck,” Scott mumbles, forehead dropping down into the crook of her neck as he bottoms out, his mouth hot and damp against her shoulder. “Good?”

Tessa nods even though it isn’t, not really; the angle isn’t right and her hair is caught under his elbow, the weight of him so dense she can scarcely move. She knows she shouldn’t lie, especially not about this, but it’s Scott. It’s _Scott_. Even if she could somehow figure out what on earth to tell him, he only just stopped getting defensive about his twizzles two years ago.  

To his credit, it doesn’t take him very long to figure it out: “Te-ss,” he says after four or five thrusts, his voice gently cajoling. “You with me?”

It’s what he says before performances. Tessa snaps-to automatically, arching her back and sinking her hands into his hair. “Yes,” she promises, staring into his eyes. “I’m with you.”

It’s not like she _isn’t_ enjoying herself. The opposite, actually. She imagined this more or less constantly when she was a teenager—a vague, gauzy version of it, anyway—and just having him here in her bed beside her satisfies a gnawing ache she’s done her best to ignore for the better part of two decades. When he thrusts in a way she recognizes is supposed to be for her benefit, she rewards him with a gasp, letting her head drop back.

Scott’s hips slow, then stop altogether. “Hey,” he says, sounding pissed. “Are you—?”

Crap. So much for being a good actress. Tessa drops out of her theatrical arch with a thump. “Um,” she says, wincing. “No?”

“What the hell, T?” Scott boosts himself up to get a better look at her, his gaze dark and injured. He isn’t angry, she realizes belatedly; he’s _hurt_. “Were you faking it the other day too?”

“No!” Tess says quickly. “I’m not—I wasn’t—” she breaks off, covering her face with a hand. God, she has no idea how to explain this, even to him. Especially to him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just—”

Scott eases himself all the way out of her, as careful as the moment he lifts her down off the podium. “Kiddo,” he says, and his voice is so quiet. “Are you sure you want to be doing this?”

Tess’s eyes fly open. “ _Yes_ ,” she says, muscling her arms around his neck and yanking him back down on top of her. Her nose is starting to run. “Holy shit, Scotty. Yes.” She kisses his ear, his jaw, his temple. “Did you miss the part where I told you we didn’t even need a condom?”  

“Okay…?” Scott shakes his head, laughing a little uncertainly. “Then what?”

Tessa shrugs. “This is still weird,” she says. It’s bigger than that, though, a feeling that if she lets him he could strip her down to one single raw nerve and leave her exposed to the elements.

“Well, we have to figure out how to get past that, T,” Scott insists, rubbing up and down her arm. He’s using one of their therapy techniques. “You gotta talk to me a little here, you know?” Tessa is about to point out that her bedroom in the middle of the night isn’t the best place for verbalizing, but then she feels his hand against her thigh, warm and inquisitive. “What about like this?” he asks, and oh God, he definitely doesn’t mean therapy talk.

“Scott,” she starts warningly, but then he slides a finger inside her and she has to stifle a gasp instead.

“You’re so wet, Tess,” he says quietly. “You must like something about this.”

Tessa covers her face with both hands. “I like _you_ ,” she says. After a moment it feels like she can’t breathe so she takes her hands away again, blinking up at him. “Scott, seriously, I—” Her voice cracks dangerously and she stops. There are pictures of him at age twelve on her wall.

Scott smiles, his finger crooking inside her until he hits something electric and good. “Is it my face?” he teases. “Should we turn you over so you don’t have to—” It stops being a joke for them both at the exact same moment, Tessa swallowing audibly and Scott sucking in his bottom lip, perfect synchronization. “I—yeah,” Scott finishes roughly. His eyes are so so dark. “Turn over.”

Tessa swallows hard and does it, turning her head and muffling a ragged cough into her upper arm. “You okay?” Scott asks, petting along her backbone. Tess has never felt less soothed in her entire life.

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, so emphatically that he chuckles, but then she arches her spine and pushes her ass back in his direction, and suddenly he’s not laughing anymore.

“Oh my God,” he says softly, freezing where he is for one shocked second before curling a hand around her hip and notching himself inside her. He feels bigger this way, thick and hot. He was right, Tessa thinks dazedly, fisting her hands in the sheets and widening her stance to accommodate him; it’s easier now, less like they’re flaying each other open just by breathing. He reaches up and pushes her hair off her neck, biting gently at her nape.

“Shit,” she says, boosting herself up into a kneeling position, tangling her fingers in his hair and dragging him down to kiss her. His chest is burning up against her back. His hands are all over her in an instant, plucking at a nipple and trailing his knuckles across her stomach, reaching down to feel where they’re joined.

“Show me,” he mumbles, so quietly Tess almost doesn’t hear him. It takes her a second to figure out what he means.

“Scott,” she whispers. She fits her fingers over his, guiding one hand between her legs and the other to her hair. He just pets her sweetly at first, but then she tightens her grip and finally he does too, making a fist in the messy strands.

“Holy fuck, Tess,” he says, and he sounds so shocked that she smiles. She wonders what kind of sex he thought they were having. “Okay, but show me this, too,” he adds after a minute, rubbing gently between her legs. “Come on, show me this.”

Tessa makes to fit her hand overtop of his again, intending to guide his fingers, but before she can he takes his hand away entirely. “Scott—” she says, her fingers dangling uncertainly between her thighs.

“ _Show_ me, Tess,” he repeats, and oh. Oh. She thinks about refusing, but then he tightens the fist in her hair just enough to force her head back, and it’s like an electric shock right between her legs. “Fuck,” he says when she starts rubbing, craning his neck over her shoulder to see. Tessa gasps quietly and spreads her thighs wider, shy but not shy enough to stop.

“Talk to me,” she says. Suddenly it’s the least embarrassing idea in the world.

“You’re beautiful,” Scott blurts immediately, then pauses as it seems to occur to him that’s not exactly the kind of talking she had in mind. He takes a deep breath, turning his face into her hair. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” he murmurs instead, teeth just barely grazing her earlobe. “Like: _fuck_ , Tess. I feel like there were whole years I almost couldn’t even look at you.”

Tess hums her encouragement, fingers moving a little bit faster; still, she can’t help but call his bluff. “Oh please,” she counters, head dropping back onto his shoulder. It’s a thrill to tease him this way, to finally be allowed to. “You looked.”

She feels his smile more than she sees it. “I said almost,” he reminds her, punctuating the words with a rough, surprising thrust she feels all over her body. Tess gasps.

“Really?” he asks, trying it again. She’s so distracted she drops her fingers altogether, but Scott guides them back between her legs. “Like that?”

Tess squeezes her eyes shut, opens them again. “Um,” she says, and then she just tells him. “Harder.”

“Fu-uck,” Scott groans, burying his face against her neck. Tessa smiles and reaches back for his hair.

“Quietly though,” she says, holding him against her as his hips speed up. Scott groans again and she tightens her grip warningly, not bothering to be nice about it, and then suddenly he’s thrusting into her _hard_ and Tess has three, maybe four strokes left. She remembers at the very last second how he couldn’t tell the first time, and turns to put her mouth against his ear. “Scott,” she whispers, and by then it’s already happening, “gonna come.”

“ _Fuck_ , Tess,” Scott says, his voice jumping up an entire octave; Tessa would laugh if she had any breath left. Instead she yanks his hair again and lets it wash over her in huge waves, gasping silently at the ceiling. By the time she’s done, her legs are so wobbly she has to let go of him to hold onto the headboard.

“Good?” Scott asks, and oh, he’s _shaking_ behind her right now.

“Good,” Tessa confirms. He asked her that the last time, too. “So good, Scott, oh my God.”

Scott makes a strangled sound and pulls out, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Keep talking,” he begs, burying his face in her neck. Tessa can hear the choppy sound of skin on skin.

She reaches for his hair again. “Love you,” she says. She turns her head and kisses his temple, his cheek, the corner of his screwed-shut eye. She wants to tell him that she’s loved him since she was twelve years old, that she’s hated every single one of his girlfriends, that she’s never letting him out of her sight again as long as she lives, but none of those things are sexy. “You’re mine,” she tells him instead, and feels something warm and wet splash against her thigh.

“Holy fuck, Tessa,” Scott groans, his hips knocking against hers clumsy and off-kilter, his teeth scraping lightly against her skin. It feels like it goes on for a long time.

“Stay there,” he mumbles when he’s finished, reaching down off the mattress and peeling his t-shirt out of his hoodie, wiping her off with gentle hands. Finally he collapses next to her on the rumpled covers, his face sleepy and young-looking in the glow from the bedside lamp. “Still weird?” he teases, reaching out to tuck her messy hair behind her ear.

“Shut up,” Tessa says, wiping her runny nose with the side of her hand as discreetly as possible; so much for romance, she guesses, although when she thinks about it she can’t imagine either one of them actually caring about stuff like that. They’ve wiped each other’s noses more than once. “It’s an adjustment, that’s all.”

“We got time,” Scott says, yawning hugely. Then, when she yawns back just as hard: “You want me to get out of here so you can crash?”

“No,” Tessa says, so emphatically he smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkling up like they do when he’s finding her charming. “It doesn’t matter,” she continues, reaching down and pulling the covers up over them. She should probably put some clothes on, but she doesn’t want to. “My mom’s not going to care. Actually she’ll probably explode with happiness if she wakes up and you’re here.” Tess thinks she might explode with happiness, too, though she doesn’t say that out loud. He’s right, she thinks, wriggling in closer. They’re got time.

“If you’re sure,” he says now, wrapping his arm around her waist and turning his head to avoid coughing directly on her. “I’m not exactly dying to shimmy back down your drainpipe, I’m not going to lie to you.”

“I’m sure,” Tess promises, resting her cheek against his heartbeat. The rasp of his breath is the last thing she hears before she falls asleep.


End file.
